Global <IR> Training License Renewed
In May 2016, BSD became the IIRC’s first Foundation Partner in the <IR> Training Program, with a license to conduct trainings globally. In the years that followed, our network of offices have held trainings in Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, South Africa and the UAE. This year, we have engaged more training partners with plans to hold trainings in Turkey and New Zealand.
In May 2016, BSD became the IIRC’s first Foundation Partner in the <IR> Training Program, with a license to conduct trainings globally. In the year that followed, our network of offices held several trainings in Brazil, Colombia, Germany, Switzerland and the UAE. We also engaged with partner organizations and through these partnerships, we reached and trained participants in Australia and South Africa.
The <IR> trainings that we have provided worldwide to date have been invaluable, not only for participants but also for us. Working with reporting managers in diverse departments gives us valuable opportunities to engage on reporting needs and challenges through iterative learning discussions and group exercises. As <IR> is still an innovative and young form of reporting, providing the trainings enables us to brainstorm with leading reporters about best ways of converging accounting and reporting systems, and communicating to investors in a more integrated manner.
We are now glad to report that we have renewed our IIRC training license for another year. Our commitment to continue as Training Partner is rooted in our learnings from this past year and our belief in the value of and critical need for Integrated Thinking, as promoted through the <IR> Framework. Providing <IR> trainings enables us to engage with sustainability leaders, companies whose financial and sustainability reporting has reached a level of maturity and are interested in taking their reporting to the next level. We understand their need to make it more strategic and overcome reporting silos.
Our role as IIRC global training partner gives us the opportunity to promote awareness and understanding of the value and importance of Integrated Thinking, in a diverse and global context. It allows us to remain at the cutting edge of reporting innovation through alignment with our work on initiatives such as Reporting 3.0, in which the IIRC also participates. The Reporting 3.0 initiative emphasizes the multi-capital approach with a focus on context and longer term value creation, and therefore has much common ground with the IIRC community.
As we look back on the learnings and insights from a successful year of <IR> trainings, we recognize that this effort is clearly about much more than reporting. It is about transformative mainstreaming. Our partnership with the IIRC enables us to leverage our sustainability knowledge and experience, our presence in both emerging and developed markets and the knowledge and experience of our training partners. The latter includes Stellenbosch University Business School, which leads our content development and brings the wealth of experience with <IR> in South Africa.
We look forward to continuing to raise awareness and build capacities in Integrated Thinking, Integrated Accounting and Integrated Reporting around the globe. We are excited about another successful year of enhancing the way organizations think, plan and report the story of their business and its holistic value creation.